Here's some questions you'll need to answer as well as general tips.
-What kind of cult will it be? Urgathoa? Norgorber? Zon-Kuthon? Lamashtu? This will determine a LOT about who's in the cult and what they are doing.
-Is this an urban, wilderness, or town adventure?
-Is the cult operating openly or in secret? If its open, how do they get away with it?
-How will the PC's discover the cult? Will they try to infiltrate it? Will they catch them in the middle of some nefarious deed?
-Traps that are keyed to the cult's alignment are a good choice for their headquarters. If there's a witch in the cult maybe make them hex traps.
-A cult that has influence over the local leadership, either the captain of the guards, mayor, or baron is a nice way for the cult to get away with what they do and ensure the PC's have to be the ones to save the day. The influence could be blackmail, magic domination, or even cult membership.
-You'll want to have some sort of hierarchy in the cult, even chaotic ones. Cults have to have a person/persons in charge and people below them. Divine casters will likely be in charge and non-casters will be under them, but you can always have a cult lead by a wizard or bard.
-Idea for a climax: after breaking in and routing the cult's lair, they have a chase scene through a hazardous environment when the cult leader runs for it. The chase scene is the first part of the final boss battle. The battle proper will start when the PC's either catch up with the cult leader or the leader falls below X hit points. Check out the Chase game mastery cards or the Edge of Anarchy from Curse of the Crimson Throne for rules on chase scenes.
-Are the PC's the only ones going after the cult? Why is this other party seeking the cult? Why haven't they found the cult and accomplished their objectives? How will this other party interact with the PC's?
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Evil cults have some interesting qualities you can use to build an adventure on.
- Their teachings are not well known by outsiders. This is not always true, but generally cults don't let people from the outside to learn much about what they really teach. They claim it is privledged information, or that their deity declared it sacred. Either way, it should be difficult to learn everything that the cult believes. Their practices and rituals would be particularly hard to discover, and the PCs might even have to witness these acts in order to learn about them.
- Good innocent people make up the bulk of a cult. Just because someone was deceived doesn't mean that they are evil. Also, the bulk of a cult will not have participated in the more evil parts of the cult, as those acts would be for only the most faithful. Because of that, your PCs should come across good people doing questionably moral things, but not with evil motivations. In fact, you may have good aligned people killing someone who threaten their way of life. These good people would be slowly turning evil the higher in the cult they go, so don't have the cult as a whole be good.
- The top is corrupt and motivated by evil. One person runs a cult, and everyone relies on that one person. However, this one person is using everyone for an evil purpose, and eventually he will abuse his power. He may do this to gain money, sex, and/or power. Some of these abuses would be public, but most of them and certainly the worst of them would be covered up. In some cases the person at the top isn't veiwed by the public as evil and some not even the cult would protect him. No matter how well he hides, however, things eventually collaspe and the head of the cult does something very evil that cannot be hid. Only in a few cases would this be something like mass suicide, but in a fantasy world it could be summoning a very powerful outsider to rampage throughout the land.
- The cult is secluded. A good amount of time the cult is secluded from the rest of the world. The reason is simple, the leader wants to limit outside influence so that his teachings are unquestioned. The cult is often self sufficent, having the ability to create its own food and resources, but sometimes they rely on trusted individual to travel to outside communities to trade and bring in resources. The cult's land is also well protected, so any outsiders trying to sneak in will be spotted and caught. However, the cult may just let outsiders walk in the front door, as they would have everything well hidden anyways. Besides, if the outsider finds something they shouldn't have they could just be forced to join the cult or they would disapear.
- The most trusted individuals would have surprisingly powerful resources. The cult may claim they do not believe in weapons, but the most trusted people, and a few sworn to not talk, would certainly have them in hidden and well accessable places. When a weapon is used and a follower sees it, it would be explained away well enough to avoid any problems. Or the follower would be killed and the death blamed on an outsider. Because of these unexpected resources, an outsider might not expect it when someone attacks them with a powerful weapon.
- Recruitment is often through the followers, not the evil mastermind. THe most powerful form of advertising is the spoken word from a friend. Most of the followers would have been friends, family, and neighbors before they joined the cult. However, kidnapping of a few individuals would not be out of the question.
-Brainwashing isn't as magical as you think. Depriving someone of outside influence, having them sit through many, many hours of serman, and having everyone around them believe in the cult can easily make someone a believer. There are other ways, like sleep depravation, drugs, and torture, but those methods are not as easy to hide and do not have as strong or lasting effect. Most of the brainwashing is just repeated exposure to the doctrine of the cult until it is excepted.
I will try to come back and help you tie all that together into an adventure, but these should prove to be good building blocks.
I am going to try to sneak in Ghaunadaur and Juiblex. Very slimy guys. And I just read a cool campaign setting called Sewer Rats about a Megacity's sewer system and aqueducts and the like and that would be a great place for slime and ooze and disease worshiping evil cult of demons, demon worships, aberrations etc, to hang out.
It is coming together, thank you for the advice.
Excellent choices, Chaotic Evil cults are some of the easiest to justify destroying. I like the idea of the cult working in the sewers and aqueducts too, those can always be fun. Some ideas:
-Don't let the sewer/aqueduct be an endless series of tunnels. You can have a large variety of rooms down there, so don't feel like everything has to be the same.
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-The Haunting of Harrowstone's bestiary has a series of creatures called Alchemical Ooze Swarms you might be interested in using.
-For Jubilex, having the cult sacrificing people to a Carnivorous Blob. Running from the blob could make for an excellent chase scene.
-Ooze infused zombies/cultists would be a very cool and creepy way to beef up regular baddies.
-For Ghlaunder, stirges should be a good pet-monster of the cult. They can also be familiars, so if you have a wizard consider giving him a stirge familiar.
-The book "Lords of Chaos" contains all the information on demons you'll ever need, including Jubilex.
-Both cults could be planning on spreading disease using the water system, but consider alternative motivations. Maybe the cult of Ghlaunder is something like a parasitic-pyramid scheme, each cultist draining resources from their underlings. Perhaps the cult of Jubilex is kidnapping alchemists to create ooze-infused people in an effort to get closer to their Faceless Lord.
-Being in a city comes with certain baggage, like guards, innocent bystanders, thieves, etc. Make sure to factor in how these will effect your adventure.
Ghaunadaur is different from Ghlaunder. Both Chaotic Evil deities, but Ghaunadaur is more ooze and slime and aberration focus.
I was thinking of the ooze and aberration god in Forgotten Realms. I didn't know he was in Pathfinder as Ghlaunder. Sweet. One more thing to surprise a party with if they metagame too much.
"No stirges for you!"
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Ghaunadaur
There are some nasty guys in the Forgotten Realms settings who I could see going into an ooze and aberration cult. I like the idea of one high level cult level not being a magic user. Thanks for the idea, Lincoln Hills.
Oops, my bad! It looks like Ghlaunder and Ghaunadaur are two different deities though. Ghlaunder is the god of parasites, stagnation, and disease, hence the stirges.
sewer rats is a good setting. I would read up on oozes and other squeezing horrors that could turn the terrain more deadly.
Morlocks and swarms come to mind. A mud elemental would not be amiss. Also Gibbering mouther is technically an abberation.
If you have the tome of horrors:
ooze golem
Hmmm... in real life there have been cults where a lot of the members were fairly innocent people. Most of the time, in fiction, though, you see a dynamic where most are culpable for the awful things the cult is responsible for, whether by turning a blind eye or by compromising themselves enough to involve themselves in it. They tend to rationalize their crimes or their very awful beliefs, which is something that a lot of people in the real world also do.
You'll see in those same dynamics the old trope of the handful of new initiates who are beginning to understand the awfulness and thinking of getting out, and about the same number who are beginning to turn toward the evil.
I think the fictional image of a cult is more promising for a roleplaying game.
What happened in Jonestown, for instance, is fascinating, but also tremendously awful. A lot of innocent people figured out too late that they were led by a madman, and in the end, his thugs (which made up a lot of his members) turned firearms on people to complete his twisted goals.
That would make a pretty depressing campaign in my mind. Better to go the fantastical route of a larger-than-life cult with more fantastical goals and less death of innocents. Moreover, the classic crazy cultist thrall makes a great low-level bad guy that you can throw out there in large numbers (with a low-level priest in attendance). The one or two innocents who need to get out are great game-starters. The kid who has begun to become twisted makes a great NPC.
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Add some slippery, slimy stones to leap to and fro upon....requiring both Acrobatic checks to jump and balance, and possibly Reflex saves too. Maybe some slimy ramps to slide down. Rope bridges over pools of slime. Waterfalls.